Greetings. My fiance, and the youngest child (9) had been playing The Legend of Drizzt as well as The Wrath of Ashardalon board games and decided to Gove more traditional d&d a go. We did a small adventure to get started that we found off tiktok, and then I bought the Candlekeep Mysteries pack as it seemed like a series to go from levels 1-16 through various adventures....we completed the first adventure book but now I am sort of at a loss on where to go. I see how the other books are actually more used as methods of research while doing other tasks, but now I am left with not a super clear path to progress forward. I suppose I am asking if there are any recommended adventures I could send them down, (now level 3) to either earn the monies to resurrect a needed npc....or another adventure that's pre-made to help them complete the goal of the first one that is now in limbo due to how it ended? Thanks in advance, sorry if this isn't clear, trying to avoid too many details as I don't want to spoil for those who have not done it yet.
What I mean by the other books being different tasks, adventure #2 in the series is a book/adventure you would find while researching lycathropy....not a direct continuation of adventure #1
Candlekeep Mysteries is an adventure anthology, meaning it's a collection of relatively independent adventures. While you could make connections and turn it into a full campaign, that would take a bit of extra work for you.
If you're looking for a good adventure, I'd recommend Dragon of Icespire Peak. It's pretty straight forward, and I enjoyed it as a player. It takes you from level 1 to 5 if I remember correctly, but there are additional adventures to take you further if you enjoy it.
As mentioned above, Candlekeep Mysteries (as well as other recent books like Radiant Citadel and Golden Vault) is an anthology book, so it is a collection of "One Shot" adventures that have little/nothing to do with each other.
If you're just starting out and having fun with that book so far, you could fairly easily play thru each adventure in a row by just handwaving some random connection between them. PCs leave Fistandia's mansion, *insert cheesy movie montage*, everyone is alive/rested somehow now and you randomly find this book that kicks off the next adventure, etc. Not the most ideal way to play DnD but it totally can work - as for learning the game it can work well because you fly thru the levels quickly but get to experience each level for a reasonable amount of time.
Another way would be to use a different adventure book that is designed to be played as a coherent campaign. This tends to be more how DnD is "normally played", and gives you a better sense of actually immersing in the world rather than time-skipping from adventure to adventure. But both ways can be fun
Candlekeep is designed to be a set of premade quests that you can just one and insert into your own campaign...or to pad out another published campaign.
So you have several choices in how to proceed. You could:
You could abandon Candlekeep and start playing another published adventure. As mentioned, Dragon of Icespire Peak is well suited for this as it has little narrative, so integrating them and/or joining partway through isn't a problem - but there's enough narrative to have the players logically progress. It runs from levels 1-7, and has additional adventures to extend it to level 13. Light if Xaryxes starts at level four, there are several adventures where starting a couple of levels late isn't an issue due to structure (Storm King's Thunder and Rime of the Frostmaiden to name two, I believe there are others).
You could cannibalise another adventure (DoIP being again particularly suited for this) to help create connecting stories that provide resources and motivation for each of Candlekeep's quests.
You could create your own quests to fill that role.
You could just handwave it. You explain that the characters continue to have adventures in which they gain resources, and during those adventures certain needs arise, pulling them back to Candlekeep...
Each option has its issues.
1 & 2 requires getting other book(s).
2 & 3 requires you to start making your own quests or story, which depends on how good and confident you are.
4 has the issue that Candlekeep only provides one quest per level (apart from one of them that has two) when usually the game has two or three after level one. That would make your characters progress at breakneck speed...it can be challenging for new players because they're going to have mechanics thrown at them thick and fast, and characters may by unsatisfying to more experienced players since they have no time to just enjoy the character's new abilities before new ones are piled on.
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Ty everyone for the advice I will look into these. I think I had to have screwed up somehow though because during just the first adventure they leveled multiple times. I followed the guide and just fought the specific monsters it had listed, gave the xp it has listed for them but they each went from 1 to 3 like almost 4 just on first adventure....I'll watch some videos and I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually...they had a blasty blast and that's all that matters at this point.
I think I had to have screwed up somehow though because during just the first adventure they leveled multiple times. I followed the guide and just fought the specific monsters it had listed, gave the xp it has listed for them but they each went from 1 to 3 like almost 4 just on first adventure
It's possible that you did everything correctly, but the Anthology books just end up being more conducive for Milestone leveling and not XP leveling.
In Milestone leveling, the DM has certain content planned for Level 2, other content planned for Level 3, etc, and players level up as they complete each set of content. So in Candlekeep, the entire Extradimensional Spaces chapter is level 1, Mighty Digressions chapter is level 2, Book of Raven chapter is level 3, etc. It makes things MUCH easier on the DM, no XP calculations are needed, you can create encounters knowing what level the players are going to be, etc. Also it encourages other solutions than just murderhobo'ing everything, because you level by completing content not by killing. It has downsides as well though, I'd recommend reading up the differences and deciding which sounds better to you
If you did anything wrong with XP leveling, my only guess might be if you were giving all players the XP value listed instead of splitting it between the party. Other than that it's totally possible that the book just wasn't balanced with XP leveling in mind. Each adventure is about the same length even though higher levels generally take much longer than low levels, so I wouldn't be surprised if early chapters have "way too much XP" for their level and late chapters have way too little XP to complete a level.
Most of the published adventures work with milestone advancement (“at the end of this chapter, the characters advance to level 6”), rather than XP. That helps ensure that the encounters are (approximately…) balanced for the party, rather than facing parties which are significantly over- or under-levelled for the challenge.
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Greetings. My fiance, and the youngest child (9) had been playing The Legend of Drizzt as well as The Wrath of Ashardalon board games and decided to Gove more traditional d&d a go. We did a small adventure to get started that we found off tiktok, and then I bought the Candlekeep Mysteries pack as it seemed like a series to go from levels 1-16 through various adventures....we completed the first adventure book but now I am sort of at a loss on where to go. I see how the other books are actually more used as methods of research while doing other tasks, but now I am left with not a super clear path to progress forward. I suppose I am asking if there are any recommended adventures I could send them down, (now level 3) to either earn the monies to resurrect a needed npc....or another adventure that's pre-made to help them complete the goal of the first one that is now in limbo due to how it ended? Thanks in advance, sorry if this isn't clear, trying to avoid too many details as I don't want to spoil for those who have not done it yet.
What I mean by the other books being different tasks, adventure #2 in the series is a book/adventure you would find while researching lycathropy....not a direct continuation of adventure #1
Candlekeep Mysteries is an adventure anthology, meaning it's a collection of relatively independent adventures. While you could make connections and turn it into a full campaign, that would take a bit of extra work for you.
If you're looking for a good adventure, I'd recommend Dragon of Icespire Peak. It's pretty straight forward, and I enjoyed it as a player. It takes you from level 1 to 5 if I remember correctly, but there are additional adventures to take you further if you enjoy it.
As mentioned above, Candlekeep Mysteries (as well as other recent books like Radiant Citadel and Golden Vault) is an anthology book, so it is a collection of "One Shot" adventures that have little/nothing to do with each other.
If you're just starting out and having fun with that book so far, you could fairly easily play thru each adventure in a row by just handwaving some random connection between them. PCs leave Fistandia's mansion, *insert cheesy movie montage*, everyone is alive/rested somehow now and you randomly find this book that kicks off the next adventure, etc. Not the most ideal way to play DnD but it totally can work - as for learning the game it can work well because you fly thru the levels quickly but get to experience each level for a reasonable amount of time.
Another way would be to use a different adventure book that is designed to be played as a coherent campaign. This tends to be more how DnD is "normally played", and gives you a better sense of actually immersing in the world rather than time-skipping from adventure to adventure. But both ways can be fun
Candlekeep is designed to be a set of premade quests that you can just one and insert into your own campaign...or to pad out another published campaign.
So you have several choices in how to proceed. You could:
Each option has its issues.
1 & 2 requires getting other book(s).
2 & 3 requires you to start making your own quests or story, which depends on how good and confident you are.
4 has the issue that Candlekeep only provides one quest per level (apart from one of them that has two) when usually the game has two or three after level one. That would make your characters progress at breakneck speed...it can be challenging for new players because they're going to have mechanics thrown at them thick and fast, and characters may by unsatisfying to more experienced players since they have no time to just enjoy the character's new abilities before new ones are piled on.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Ty everyone for the advice I will look into these. I think I had to have screwed up somehow though because during just the first adventure they leveled multiple times. I followed the guide and just fought the specific monsters it had listed, gave the xp it has listed for them but they each went from 1 to 3 like almost 4 just on first adventure....I'll watch some videos and I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually...they had a blasty blast and that's all that matters at this point.
It's possible that you did everything correctly, but the Anthology books just end up being more conducive for Milestone leveling and not XP leveling.
In Milestone leveling, the DM has certain content planned for Level 2, other content planned for Level 3, etc, and players level up as they complete each set of content. So in Candlekeep, the entire Extradimensional Spaces chapter is level 1, Mighty Digressions chapter is level 2, Book of Raven chapter is level 3, etc. It makes things MUCH easier on the DM, no XP calculations are needed, you can create encounters knowing what level the players are going to be, etc. Also it encourages other solutions than just murderhobo'ing everything, because you level by completing content not by killing. It has downsides as well though, I'd recommend reading up the differences and deciding which sounds better to you
If you did anything wrong with XP leveling, my only guess might be if you were giving all players the XP value listed instead of splitting it between the party. Other than that it's totally possible that the book just wasn't balanced with XP leveling in mind. Each adventure is about the same length even though higher levels generally take much longer than low levels, so I wouldn't be surprised if early chapters have "way too much XP" for their level and late chapters have way too little XP to complete a level.
Most of the published adventures work with milestone advancement (“at the end of this chapter, the characters advance to level 6”), rather than XP. That helps ensure that the encounters are (approximately…) balanced for the party, rather than facing parties which are significantly over- or under-levelled for the challenge.